I never expected to see a serious environmental threat strike so close to home. I'm privileged to live in a community with clean water and clean air. Besides that, people in my neighborhood, and the entire state, enjoy easy access to protected wilderness in the form of state parks and National Forests.

Just down the road is Talladega National Forest. It's a destination for hikers, hunters, campers, bikers, and sightseers. Plus, it contains essential water sources for nearby towns.

After literally throwing myself into the halls of the 2013 Alabama Legislative Session with no experience for four months straight, I felt like it might be a good idea to share a bit of what I, and the sensational team of CASE student organizers statewide, learned from our work.

This grinding session has been dubbed “We Dare Defend Our Rights,” in reference to the comprehensive legislative agenda that was successfully passed by the House/Senate Super-Majority, creating a multitude of conservative laws pertaining to abortion, healthcare, and public education, all (for better or for worse) unique to the nation. Despite the challenging environment, we made some real progress, which you can read about in a previous post.

It's been a busy season for environmental organizing in Alabama. The Coalition of Alabama Students for the Environment (CASE) has been working to connect university groups throughout the state, while establishing a presence on the political scene. So our work has taken place on two vastly different fronts: on college campuses and at the state legislature in Montgomery.

With the arrival of summer, both the school semester and the legislative session have come to a close. Now is an ideal time to debrief and celebrate our successes. For our friends in the Southeast and around the country, here's what we've been up to the last few months.

It was April 9, and students from across Alabama were headed to the state capitol in Montgomery. On another day, you might have seen some of us doing the typical environmentalist stuff—digging in an organic garden, hiking in the mountains, or rallying on the streets. But today, it was all business. We brushed our hair and tucked in our shirts. We even wore shoes.

At the end of March, an ExxonMobil tar sands pipeline ruptured in Arkansas. Since then, around 300,000 gallons of oil have spilled. And this isn’t conventional crude we’re talking about—it’s diluted bitumen, which is heavier and harder to clean up because it sinks in water. An all-too-familiar deceptive media campaign from Exxon has made things even more complicated.

Here are the essentials. I’d encourage you to follow the links for more background.

On April 9, Alabama students are headed to the state capitol in Montgomery, taking with them a powerful message for lawmakers: Responsible water policy is important to all of us. Alabama currently lacks a comprehensive water management plan, and several industrial projects, including the proposed Shepherd Bend coal mine, threaten drinking water supplies in the Birmingham area.

Congress may be stuck in political gridlock, but the youth climate movement is running full speed ahead. Case in point: College students in Alabama are kicking off 2013 with an unprecedented statewide Sustainable Investment Project. The goal? Allocate one million dollars in campus sustainability funding by January 2014.